Den of iniquity: the glorious Gerry’s
(Picture: Press Image)An Irishman I know whose hair seems to undergo daily electroshock treatments recently ventured that the Bermuda Triangle doesn’t hold a candle to what he’s dubbed the Soho isosceles of doom and ruin, a triad that takes in the Coach and Horses on Greek Street, the French House two roads over and the French’s wayward neighbour, Gerry’s. To his credit, while it’s tricky to argue this patch of W1 disappears the greater number of planes, it’s certainly got a way with vanishing memories.
The main culprit, I reckon, is Gerry’s, from which I’ve presently barred myself on the idle account that I’d quite like to make my 40th birthday, or even my 33rd. Gerry’s is the kind of drinking club that mostly died around the time (supposed regular) Francis Bacon did — roughly three decades back — but while Gerry’s compatriots mostly succumbed to their cirrhosis long ago, this place battled on, vodka tonic in hand, right up until the pandemic did it in. It was the last haunt for that certain Soho sort, the ones with barbed wire for brains and Keith Richards’s wrinkles, and mostly it turned away everyone who hadn’t already been going since before decimalisation.
